Is she okay now? Did she have the baby? Was it a boy?
I worry about the pandemic. I know so little about it. How deadly is it? How many people have died? Could Sarah be one of…
I realize that I am once again going down that same old rabbit hole with my thoughts about Sarah. Our dead son, in our real world. And a possible fear about how the pandemic may have infected, and killed a possible seven year old son I may have in this world.
Yet, in spite of everything, I must find her. If I am in the same world where Sarah has had my son, I must find them. I must see my son! Unfortunately, the thought of seeing her is immediately accompanied by the realization that, almost certainly, Sarah will not want to see me.
When I first met her in this world, I fought for her trust. She resisted me. I tricked her into loving me. Then I got her pregnant. And then I abandoned her.
Viewed like that, I realize that she must almost certainly hate me. You can earn a person’s trust once, but when you throw it away, casting it aside like I did, you never earn the right to get it back.
So, even if I can find Sarah and our son in this world, the likelihood that she will agree to see me, is… about… zero.
I force myself to think of other things. But when I do, my mind wanders instead to my real Sarah… although I know they are both real, I still can’t help thinking about Sarah in my own, real world, as being the real Sarah… The Sarah in this world is not an impostor, not another Sarah, she is the same, I know,… but… our experiences together have been different.
I feel very depressed. A heavy weight presses down on my heart.
Eight years have passed.
Keira and Nicole will be practically grown up by now. Even if I ever manage to jump back to my real world to see them again, I will have missed their childhood. Will they even remember me?
Will Sarah even remember me?
In my real world, or in this one, wherever this one actually is?
My eyes are still refusing to close, my head still buzzing with thoughts, when I hear two sets of footsteps come to a halt outside my door. I hear the lock turn, and the blue, heavy metal door swings open.
Two female police officers with transparent plastic shields covering their faces step into the cell. I can tell this is serious just from one glance at their faces.
Am I going to be executed? My nails torn-out? Tortured and given water-boarding treatment?
“James,” the tall woman officer on my right starts, the other looking as compassionate as possible. “I’m sorry, but we have some rather sad news for you. It’s about your mother…”
In the blink of an eye, I am sitting bolt upright, my heart instantly pumping at a hundred beats per minute.
“What? What about her? Could you not find her? Is she ill?”
“I am sorry, but, when we tried to contact your mother we established that she had unfortunately passed away in June 2018. At the start of the pandemic. She was one of its first victims. We are so sorry.”
I stare at them both. I heard what the woman just said, but it doesn’t register.
“Are you sure it was my mother. Not another woman with the same name?”
“James, we checked and double-checked. It was your mother. There is no doubt.”
My head is shaking, side-to-side. My mouth is open, as if to say something, but nothing comes out.
I just saw her two days ago. She was as well as can be. Vibrant. Full of life. Smiling at me.
“Did she suffer? How did she die?” I ask, the words escaping my mouth without direction from my conscious self.
“It seems she was admitted to Kingston Hospital and put on a ventilator. She was struggling to breathe. But her heart gave out, and she passed away, peacefully. She was asleep and didn’t wake up.” The other officer volunteers.
A tear escapes from the corner of my left eye. Then the next moment I seem to be crying. I feel my body beginning to shake, but it is as if I am looking down at myself from above. I feel strangely detached. Not part of what is going on.
I struggle to regain control, coughing several times, and standing up.
“When was this?” I ask.
“June last year,” the one on the right replied.
“No, I heard that part. I meant, what time did she die at?” I press. Why, I don’t know. Is it really important?
“Three o’clock in the afternoon.”
Three o’clock? Who dies at three o’clock in the afternoon? I would have thought something like four in the morning, or six, or eleven at night, but not in the middle of afternoon tea!
Random, silly, thoughts.
“Would you rather be left alone?” the one on the left asks. She’s smaller. Darker skin. Again, why have I just noticed that? My mother just died, and I am comparing size and skin colour?!!!!!
“Yes. Please.” I reply.
They turn to leave.
“Did I go to the funeral?” I blurt out, bizarrely, as they reach the door.
“No. No mourners were allowed to go. She was cremated in Kingston and her ashes distributed along the banks of the Thames.”
I stare at them, not believing the words I have just heard.
“My mother died and no one was allowed to go to the funeral? What sort of world is this now?”
“Emergency government rules introduced last year do not allow any mourners to attend funerals. They still don’t. The Rule of Two still applies everywhere. No groups larger than two people can exist.”
“Dead or alive?????”
“Exactly.”
“Did I even know about her death?”
“It seems not, James. No one was able to contact you at the time. This is the first time her death has been connected with you.”
I open my mouth to ask a million questions, and to protest, and to demand that they…
That they ‘what’?
Instead, I lie down on my blue bed, wipe away my tears, and close my eyes. My throat feels very tight. I feel dizzy.
Suddenly, it’s all too much. My brain begins to shut down, to block the world out.
A picture of my mother fills my mind.
She is smiling.
She holds out her hands to me, and I go to her.
A moment later I am asleep.
Chapter Eleven
A prison cell
Central London
.
“James, we need to talk.”
The tall female police officer is standing by the open door of my cell.
As I blink my eyes awake a few times, I sit up, swing my legs over the edge of the blue mattress, and stare at her. Her face is still covered with the ridiculous plastic head covering, as if she was scared I’m going to spit at her. Her hands are hidden within blue gloves, which I notice as she points to a tray with tea and porridge on it in the middle of the floor.
“James, you can’t stay here. We have to get you out. We’ve agreed we’re not sending you to the prison unless we can’t find anywhere else for you. The doctor’s right. Sending you there could be a death sentence if you catch ‘The ‘18’. But, you can’t stay here. So you need to tell us about somewhere else you can go? And we need to know this morning.”
I stare at her. I shake my head.
“I haven’t got anywhere to go. And I haven’t been outside of London for… eight years?”
I mutter, thinking back to yesterday morning when I woke up in my own comfortable bed in Surbiton. Just over twenty-four hours ago, or eight years. Depending upon which point of view you choose to adopt.
“I’ll be back in an hour. If you come up with anything, shout for me.”
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“You can call me, PC Alexander.”
“First name?”
She laughs and closes the door.
Twenty minutes later, I call her name.
When she opens the door, I stand up and walk to the middle of my cell.
“I would like you to track down and call Professor Kasparek of
Edinburgh University. He used to live in Ravelston Dykes in Edinburgh. If you find him, tell him it’s James Quinn, and that I just arrived in London. And tell him the last time I saw him was on the tube train while he filmed me. He’ll understand.”
The police officer takes a step closer and laughs again.
“You want me to call Professor Kasparek, last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics and this year’s most popular TV chat-show guest? ‘Hi Professor, international celebrity of the year and very famous person, sorry to disturb you, but I have a tramp in a prison cell in London who says he knows you and that you filmed him on a tube train. He would like to talk to you, if that’s all right?’ ”
“You know the Professor?” I exclaim, stepping forward towards her. She immediately steps back and shows me the palm of her gloved hand.
“Whoa… stay back. Three metres, remember!”
I apologize and step back towards the centre of my cell.
“James, we can’t call him. You can’t just pick any random celebrity. It has to be a real person who knows you. And you only have a few hours to do it.”
“Please, call him.” I beg her. “He knows me. As soon as you tell him what I just said, he’ll agree to speak to me. He’ll be very excited!”
“Don’t be silly. Pick someone else.”
“I can’t. It’s him or no one else. He’s my last chance. And if you don’t call him, I’ll end up in that prison you’re threatening me with, and I’ll get this pandemic thing, and I’ll rot and die, probably suffering terribly in the process, and it’ll all be your fault. Because you’re judging a man by the cut of his clothes and who he appears to be, without knowing anything about him or what’s happened to him. Have you never heard the expression that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover? Well, you can’t judge a tramp by his clothes. For all you know, once upon a time, I might have been one of the most influential people in London! For all you know, maybe I’m the one responsible for famous London landmarks like the Millennium Dome. Maybe I was one of the core team of organisers behind the Olympics in 2016!” I say, taking a punt that in this world there was a 2016 Olympics.
“The 2016 Olympics? The most brilliant Olympics ever? You were responsible for it? Don’t be silly…”
“How do you know I wasn’t? Because I look like a tramp? Because I was arrested several times for being drunk?” I interrupt her. “I’m serious. HOW DO YOU KNOW I WASN’T ?!”
I shout it. Not as a question. But in pure frustration and anger.
“And how do you know I don’t know the Professor? The truth is you don’t. And the only way you’re going to find out is by calling him!”
I can see that she is hesitating. She wants to reply, but doesn’t yet know what to say. She’s thinking about what I just said.
“PC Alexander. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but here’s the deal. If you call Professor Kasparek and he doesn’t know me and doesn’t want to see me, then you win, and you can send me to that prison, and I’ll catch ‘The ’18’ thingy and die, and you won’t have to feel guilty, because you gave a tramp a chance. BUT, and this is the ‘but’, if he does know me, and he wants to speak to me, you have to agree to tell me your first name, so that I can send you a bouquet of flowers with your name on it, with thanks for saving my life.”
PC Alexander just stares at me in reply. She opens her mouth to say something but no words come out.
A moment later, she turns around, closes the door, and walks away.
“So,” I think to myself. “That went well!”
Kicking myself for not being smarter, I sit back down on my bed and start to mentally prepare myself for my new prison cell in that big scary prison I’ve been threatened with.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit!
------------------------------------
About forty minutes later, the cell door is opened. The tall, attractive police officer steps into the room, another, even-taller male officer standing behind her.
The woman walks into the middle of the room.
“Sue.”
She only says one word.
At first I don’t get it, but then I realize what’s just happened, and in response, I laugh.
“Good, now we’ve got that bit over, will you please follow me. We’re taking you to another room where you can make a call to the Professor. He’s very excited about speaking to you. Stay three metres behind me, and don’t touch anything. Understood?”
I nod.
“Thank you, Sue.”
I think I detect the slightest upturning of the corners of her mouth. Not exactly a full-blown smile, but probably the closest I’m going to get to it.
The other room I’m taken to has a table, three chairs, and a pot of tea with one cup. There’s already milk in the cup. There’re two sachets of sugar on the table beside it.
In the centre of the table there is a large blue telephone.
“Thank you,” I say, sitting down. “Is that for me?” I nod at the tea.
“Yes,” she acknowledges, and then sits down on one of the chairs. The other officer sits down beside her.
I’m just about to sip my tea, the first time I’ve drunk tea in over eight years, when a voice catches me by surprise, causing me to almost drop my cup.
“James! Is that your voice I recognise?” the voice booms from the telephone on the table.
“Sorry, I forgot to mention, he’s waiting for you on the line…” Sue replies. “And, obviously, I owe you an apology. I’m sorry.”
I smile back at Sue, then turn my entire focus to the Professor.
“Where are you?” I ask, speaking at the phone.
“Back in Scotland.” He says.
“Wow… that’s quick, I only just saw you last night and you’re already home!”
There’s a moment’s silence at the other end of the phone.
“James, before we go any further with this call, I need to know it’s definitely you, and to determine which James you really are.”
“Which James?” I immediately question. Confused.
“Give me a moment. I need to think of a question only you will be able to answer.”
I nod, an action that’s wasted on the Professor. I glance across at Sue and the other policeman and I can see they are both amazed by the conversation that’s unfolding before them.
Not half as much as I am.
“James, okay, so,… what was the last word you heard when you last saw me.”
“Pregnant.” I reply instantly. “In fact, it sounded more like ‘Pregnaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnt’, if you get my drift. As time slowed down, the word just seemed to hang in the air. I didn’t catch it until it was almost too late. Although by that time I had already made up my mind.”
“Who is in the room with you just now?” the Professor changes tack.
I look across at the police officers.
“Two police officers. One woman, called Sue, and another one. A tall, male.”
“Mike,” the officer says, bending forward slightly towards the phone. “Professor Kasparek, my name is Mike. And if I may say so, Sir, it’s truly an honour to meet you!”
“Quite so,” the Professor replies. “I’m sure it is. Thank you. Now, please, may I ask you both to leave the room so that James and I can talk in private?”
The two officers look at each other, neither knowing quite what to say.
“I’m sorry, but that would be against station protocol…” Sue begins to protest but is cut off by the Professor.
“Okay, hang on a second… What station are you in?” The Professor asks.
“Charing Cross in Agar Street.”
“Good. Stay on the line, please, and wait… I’ll be back in a few moments.”
We all look at each other. I’m just as surprised as the others.
We wait.
For quite a few minutes.
Eventually, Mike breaks the silence.
“How come you know him? He�
�s a major celebrity. One of the cleverest people in the world. When he was on Wogan on TV last weekend our whole family stayed up to watch.”
“The Professor was on Wogan?” I blurt out.
“Yes, he’s on TV a lot.” Sue answers, quite quietly. “Listen, about earlier… you’ve got to understand… from my point of view, I can’t just go around calling important public figures because someone we pick up in the street says they know them!”
Before I get a chance to reply, the door opens and someone with a few more stripes on their shoulders than either Sue or Mike pops his head around the door.
“You two, out the room, now.” The man looks across the room at me, his eyes studying me. “I don’t know who you are, Sir, but the Home Secretary just called me personally and told me to make sure you have a decent lunch, shower, shave and a new set of clothes. And to await further instructions.”
The senior officer returned his attention to the others. “You think I’m joking? I’m not. Get back to normal duties. Mr Quinn, just open the door and shout for someone when you’re ready for your lunch. We’ll be straight back.”
I have to admit, I’m rather impressed.
The Home Secretary called to order me lunch?
Wow!
“James, are we alone now?” the Professor’s voice is back.
“Yes. How did you pull that?”
“Later. I’ll explain it all later. But I have to ask you a few other questions now, just to be ABSOLUTELY sure it’s really you.”
“Fire away.”
“The James I knew was in love with Jane. He was doing his best to make her happy, and didn’t want to leave her. So why did you? And how could you leave her behind when she was pregnant?”
“What…?” I blurt out, before I can think. Something’s wrong.
“That’s not right.” I continue. “I was never really in love with Jane. I was in love with Sarah! And I wasn’t trying to make Jane happy. I was trying to help her get stronger so that she didn’t need me, and could survive without me. I was hoping that she might even one day kick me out. In the end, I left her so that I could do the jump back to my world and to Sarah. And it wasn’t Jane who was pregnant. It was Sarah!” I pause. “I’m sorry, something’s gone wrong. Maybe I’m not the James you know, and maybe this is not a world that I’ve got the same connection to…”
Am I Dead? Page 6